What's Not: Not really meant for travel or for kids to play with as a toy as the robot parts might break.

Reviewed by Tong Zhang

eKids is a collaboration between Disney and iHome to produce electronics that appeal to kids or those who are young at heart. The Robo Rechargeable Speaker is a small wired speaker that has surprisingly good audio quality and high volume. Unlike other eKids' products that feature Disney characters such as Minnie Mouse, Cinderella or from Cars or Nightmare Before Christmas, the Robo Rechargeable Speaker comes in the shape of the Android robot and comes in green (of course), black, pink and blue.

Design

The Robo Rechargeable Speaker by iHome is a very small and portable speaker. The height of the speaker is only 4.5' if you count the antennas sticking out on its head and its round body measures 3.25" in diameter if you count the two arms or 2.5" if you don't. The shape of the speaker is the familiar Android robot and the body of the robot houses a weighty and loud speaker. The robot has a black base that has padded feet to prevent the speaker from slipping on smooth surface. You can rotate the arms on the robot in 360-degrees for make a pose but the arms don't have other functions. The robots eyes hide the LED lights. When you turn the speaker on the eyes light up in blue and when the speaker is charging, the eyes turn red.

The Robo Rechargeable Speaker is very easy to use. It has a built-in rechargeable battery and comes with a cable that combines the charging USB/micro USB cable and a 3.5mm audio cable in a wire clip that helps keep the cable tidy. The Robo Rechargeable Speaker has a micro USB charging port on the back and a power on/off slider next to the port.

Audio Quality and Volume

For a speaker this size, the audio range and volume are quite amazing. It has a much bigger sound presence as the its small size suggests and the driver is reasonably dynamic. When you turn the volume high on your device, the audio quality through the speaker doesn't distort or deteriorate thanks to the strong driver. The balance is also good and most tracks show their correct dynamics between vocals, instruments and electronic adjustments made on the tracks. The speaker doesn't particularly have a strong bass, but it lets audio package as whole shine through. There's no volume on the speaker, so you'll need to use your smartphone, tablet or MP3 player to adjust the playback volume.

Battery

The Robo Rechargeable Speaker by iHome has a built-in rechargeable battery that's 500mAh in capacity. You can charge the battery via a computer using the included cable (does charging only with no audio pass through) or anything out puts DC 3.7V. The battery in the speaker takes about 2 hours to charge and each charge can play 5-6 hours. When you're not using the speaker, be sure to turn it off using the power slider on the back. The LED lights through the robot's eyes will turn red when the speaker is charging and turn blue when it's fully charged. When the battery is running low, the blue LED lights will dim and the audio will start to sound distorted.

Conclusion

The Robo Rechargeable Speaker is surprisingly small and surprisingly loud. This wired speaker comes with a carrying pouch and it's easy to take with you anywhere. It outputs very loud sound and the audio quality is quite good. The speaker weighs only 6.2 ounces and comes in four kid friendly colors including the signature Android green.